Traipsing we go in this land of rot
by if-llamas-could-fly
Summary: One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it - water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. If the grave makes you want to be somewhere else, that is the ghoul-gate. It's also where Sam's finally found Dean.


**A/N Hey guys! So... It's been a year since I joined this site, and I wanted to wrote a fic to commemorate that. Y'know, special occasion and all that jazz. Anyway, I challenged myself to actually get a half-decent oneshot longer than one thousand words written out in under two hours, and I did! Yay! I have no idea where this came from. I was just inspired by a quote I found. This is really not my best work, but meh. It's weird. And angsty. And very much in need of editing. Deal with it. Enjoy! :)** _~Sammy_

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_**Traipsing we go in this land of rot**_

"_One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it - water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. It may be colder than the other gravestones, too, and the name on the stone is all too often impossible to read. If there is a statue on the grave it will be headless or so scabbed with fungus and lichens as to look like fungus itself. If one grave in a graveyard looks like a target for petty vandals, that is the ghoul-gate. If the grave makes you want to be somewhere else, that is the ghoul-gate." _

― _Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book_

000

It was dark.

The kind of dark that swooped and swirled in invisible currents that were invisible only by the virtue of it being _so_ dark that _everything_ was invisible. Not that he'd ever dare describe it that way out loud, because Dean would probably laugh and call him a geek if he did.

The darkness was hardly a shock. With the way he grew up, he might as well have lived out his whole _life_ in the dark. He spent his childhood lying wide awake in bed in darkened rooms, trembling in the cold that always crept in when he was alone, waiting for the roar of an old familiar engine that would finally let him relax- warm with the knowledge that his family was back and _safe_. He spent his high-school years reading over embossed stiff-papered ivy-league college applications, squinting at the heavy words in the meagre light that managed to slip past the crack of the door and breached the stuffy darkness of the closets he hid himself in. He spent his few years of freedom- of escape- watching the way the dark glinted against the bright honey-gold of his girlfriend's hair, marveling at the thought of being lucky enough to find the one girl who's smile made him forget what lurked in the shadows. He spent his adult life tracking down the monsters that lived in the dark and shoving their asses back 'down the path to the light' or whatever it was that the pastor had said during his sermon back in that church he'd snuck into three states ago. It was in the dark, after all, that Hunters- swept up as they were in the the ever moving tide of the fight against the dark- truly found their home.

000

(_They'd crawled back to the motel of the week, in the early hours of the morning, exhausted and covered with dirt and grime, traces of smoke and ash and some errant grains of salt caught in their hair, and a whole new array of bruises courtesy of a pissed off ghost of a gardener who'd been murdered by his employer for planting white roses instead of red. Or was that Alice in Wonderland? He wasn't sure anymore. _

_Dean had run a hand over his head while driving with the other, and touched a bump that hurt like a _bitch_, and, amongst much swearing on Dean's part that mostly consisted of variations of _'Goddamnit Sam, you've _got_ to stop getting thrown into headstones', _he'd come to the conclusion that he had a concussion. As if the purple harpies dancing all around in him in the dark of the night weren't enough of a hint in the first place.)_

000

The wheel of the Impala was smooth under his hands, and he rubbed a thumb over the vinyl, watching the tarmac disappear beneath a powerful engine and road-hungry wheels. The car thrummed beneath his fingers, and he could remember how many times that same growling hum had lulled him to sleep as a kid, his head on his brother's shoulder, feet propped up against the back of the front bench seat, a blanket wrapped around him because '_You'll get cold, idiot._' There was no sleeping now. Not anymore.

'_Wreck my baby,_' Dean had said, back when he was sixteen and Dean was handing him the keys for the first time, '_and I'll kill you_.'

He drove slowly, because it was a cloyingly foggy night, and mist was snaking across the black tar of the road; like the serpents that had crawled into his sleeping bag that one time their dad had taken them camping- he'd spent the rest of the night curled up in Dean's, while his brother stayed up to make sure there weren't any snakes that had survived his ultimate beatdown on the 'infested' sleeping bag with an unloaded shotgun. He smiled at the memory, but his expression darkened when he glanced at the empty passenger seat.

The engine roared as the car sped up.

000

_(He'd somehow been stripped down to his boxers and shoved into the shower, and he suspected that, in spite of his grumbling, Dean had had a lot to do with that. He'd leaned against the wall that was probably dirtier than both he and Dean combined post-salt'n'burn, as the shower-head- that was a full half foot lower than it should be to properly accommodate someone his size- sputtered out lukewarm water in a ridiculously pathetic attempt at good water pressure. He scrubbed away the mud coating him, watching the specks of dirt swirl around the drain, and he'd wondered if maybe, after he was done with everything, he'd swirl away into a drain too. The thought made him laugh a bit, and yeah, that was the concussion right there._

_He'd struggled into the sweatpants that had been left out for him- because Dean was _totally _not hovering- and he had barely collapsed onto his bed before Dean was hauling him up again, propping him up against the headboard and telling him to '_shut up and stop whining_' when he complained. He swore at his brother when he shone a flashlight in his eyes, but Dean had just swatted his shoulder and told him to settle down before he gave himself another concussion.)_

000

The road switched to gravel, and the car shook almost violently as it rumbled over the loose stones. His grip tightened on the steering wheel, and he clenched his jaw and leveled what Dean would call a '_bitchface_' at the patch of road he could see under the low glare of the headlights. _'No way am I going to be the douchebag with the highbeams on, Sam!'_

There were oak and chestnut trees lining the road, and he thought that maybe in the daylight they were actually calming and comforting to anybody driving down the road, but in the choking darkness of the night, the trees were ebony skeleton hands, reaching up to the starless skies, their bony-fingered branches clawing their way past the ground.

Roads like this had never bothered him- it was hard to be bothered by a sight that had been a steady backdrop for your childhood, after all- but this road, lined by the black trees dripping with ink, it _terrified_ him.

It was always worse, when he was alone.

000

_(Dean had kept waking him up, shaking him awake and shooting so many questions at him, he'd wondered if maybe he was doing a shot-quiz back at Stanford and not being rescued from slipping into a coma by his brother. He thought he might have said that out loud, because Dean had sent him his own version of a bitchface- It _had_ to be hereditary. Because he had definitely seen that look on his dad's face before, and Dean had said that he remembered mom doing it too, once or twice. Definitely hereditary.- and he'd pushed him back down and tucked him in with a snarky _'you comfy yet, princess?'.

_He'd mumbled something that sounded vaguely like '_jerk' _at his brother, barely hearing the soft laugh and the _'bitch' _his brother shot back at him)_

000

The graveyard was empty. Or, well, it _looked_ empty. Not that that mattered anyway, because the emptiness ahas what he had come there to fix.

The ground was soft beneath his boots, his feet sinking into the wet mud and grass with a sickening squelch. He trained his flashlight on every headstone he passed, reading the names and dates- all meaningless to him- carved into stone. The grave markers grew more and more decrepit with every step he took, until he reached a point where they were nothing more than crooked slabs of stone, their names and dates weathered off with the years. He walked further, into the part of the yard that was enveloped in the black so absolute he wondered if maybe there was a black hole waiting for him there. He walked until he reached the furthest corner, where the stone was nothing more than a single gray tooth sticking up at a strange angle, moss growing over the words that were one more light breeze away from being completely obliterated. He brushed aside the lichen with trembling fingers, shuddering at the chill that crept up his spine as his skin scraped against rough marble. He pressed his lips to the edge of the stone, taking a step back as a sudden breeze twisted his hair around, watching with wide eyes as the ground in front of the grave swelled, rising up and up and _up_ until it was breached.

A hand shot up from the dirt, nothing more than skin hanging loose off of bone. The rest of the body rose with it, and he stumbled back a few more steps, shivering as the night grew even colder.

Dean rose from the grave, smiling a smile that was all rotting teeth, his dead green eyes sparkling. _"__Did you miss me, Sammy?'_

000

_(He'd shot up, sweat streaming down his back, gasping for air. His head spun, worse than it had when he'd hit his head on the gravestone. He heard a chair dropping back down onto all fours, and he'd looked up to see Dean sitting at the rickety table, concern etched across his face. '_You okay, Sammy?'

_Yes, he'd nodded. Yes. He was fine._

_Just a nightmare.)_

000

Dean laughed. 'It's_ not a nightmare if you think it's real.'_

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**A/N So... this was weird. Did you like it? Did you not like it? Are you contemplating murder? Let me know what you thought in a review! Reviews are muse-fodder! :) **_~Sammy_


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